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As a little boy, Bishop George V. Murry was raised as an African Methodist Episcopal, but was so impressed by his experience at his Catholic school that he convinced his parents to allow him to convert. Eventually, they too, became Catholic. In the Diocese of Youngstown, 406 converts have joined the Church just in time for Easter. On Saturday, 169 people received the Sacrament of Baptism, and 237 who were baptized in another denomination received the sacraments of confirmation and the Holy Eucharist. Adults who want to become Catholic must enter a months-long education process known as RCIA, the Rite...

ADV Responds to Appeal by The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia (April 7, 2009) - In response to the appeal in the Virginia church property litigation filed on Tuesday, April 7 by the Diocese of Virginia and The Episcopal Church, the Anglican District of Virginia Vice-Chairman Jim Oakes issued the following statement: "We are saddened that The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia find it necessary to continue this litigation with an appeal filed during Holy Week. The appeal process will cost additional millions of dollars that could be spent on mission and ministry. Both sides have...

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the cutest clergyman of all? A 66-year-old Staten Island pastor trying desperately to turn back the clock ripped off nearly $85,000 from his congregation to pay for plastic surgery, Botox shots and fancy clothes, authorities said yesterday The Rev. William Blasingame, 66, a fixture at the historic St. Paul's Memorial Episcopal Church for more than 30 years, began breaking the Eighth Commandment in January 2005 and continued to steal for another three years, according to the Staten Island district attorney. The unwed Blasingame's miraculous makeovers apparently impressed some of the older members of his...

On a stormy Sunday morning in Charlotte, N.C., latecomers were still shaking off wet umbrellas and streaming into a rented chapel at a local Catholic high school as Anglican minister Filmore Strunk led the congregation in reading Psalm 19: "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold." For this congregation, those words ring especially true: Less than 15 months ago, the 300-member group was worshipping with more than 1,000 other parishioners in a 22,000-square-foot, gothic-style sanctuary on a prime piece of property in a growing...

Thomas Shaw, the Bishop of Massachusetts: “I am thrilled with the appointment of Katharine Ragsdale as the president and dean of EDS. She brings a wealth of small parish ministry to her new position and it is critical that the new president and dean be able to train and form parish priests for the growth of progressive parishes across the country. She brings a wealth of experience, talent and creativity to this new position.” Dr. Angela Bauer-Levesque, acting academic dean: “I am elated to have the Rev. Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale join EDS as its first woman president and dean....

SEATTLE, Washington (CNN) -- Ann Holmes Redding has what could be called a crisis of faiths. For nearly 30 years, Redding has been an ordained minister in the Episcopal Church. Her priesthood ended Wednesday when she was defrocked. The reason? For the past three years Redding has been both a practicing Christian and a Muslim. "Had anyone told me in February 2006 that I would be a Muslim before April rolled around, I would have shaken my head in concern for the person's mental health," Redding recently told a crowd at a signing for a book she co-authored on religion....

These are the two things I want you, please, to remember – abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done... The announcement on Monday, March 30 that The Rev. Dr. Katherine Ragsdale was appointed as the sixth and newest president of Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) in Cambridge, MA, has orthodox and pro-life Episcopalians shaking their heads. Ragsdale, who is an outspoken advocate...

One of the Church of England's most outspoken bishops has announced that he is to resign a decade early to devote the rest of his life to work with Christians in Islamic areas. The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Church's only Asian bishop, who is just 59 and could have stayed at Rochester until his 70th birthday, intends to use his expertise as an Islamic scholar to work in Pakistan where he was born and in the Middle East to build bridges between Christians and Muslims. A conservative evangelical, he will step down in September after nearly 15...

MANCHESTER, NH (July 9, 2021) -- The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church today has warned that the Diocese of New Hampshire must not in any way be ostracized because it has chosen to elect the church’s first openly non-celibate animal-loving bishop. "As presiding bishop, I am called to see to it that all perspectives are treated with respect,” said the Most Rev. Annie Thangohs. “We can, of course, disagree on the issue of animal-loving in the Christian life. I have seen, however, some distressing accounts in the secular press. I had hoped that we had removed that hateful term,...

It was good to hear some encouraging news from the Church of England, reported by Robert last week. However, little good seems to come from the The Episcopal Church (TEC) in USA. The Church of England Newspaper (27 February 2009) reported that the Anglican Communion’s first Anglican-Buddhist bishop was recently elected at a special convention of the Diocese of Northern Michigan. Concerns had been raised about the suitability of a professed Buddhist who said he had received Buddhist “lay ordination” and was “walking the path of Christianity and Zen Buddhism together” as well as the fact that he was the...

The Bishop of Virginia, Peter James Lee will shortly retire and head to the ultra-liberal revisionist Diocese of California as Dean of its cathedral. Before stepping away from 25 years as bishop of the largest East Coast diocese, he gave an interview to the "Washington Post" in which he made a number of statements that stand in direct contradiction to the Christian Faith and historic Anglicanism. When asked what the most important ways in which the Anglican Communion, the worldwide church of which Episcopalians are a part, has changed in the past 25 years, Lee said this, "The awareness of...

Many cradle Catholics I know look at the moral conflicts tearing apart the mainline denominations with sadness, but as a convert from one of them (the Episcopal Church, the most notoriously divided one of them all), I think this is not quite the right response.We will feel sad at the sight of beloved Christian friends suffering as their churches divide, but we might be heartened to see that because these conflicts express flaws in the original design, they will encourage some to greater friendship, if not full reconciliation, with the Catholic Church.The sadness we feel will be like the sadness...

Even as a Brown University student, Ann Holmes Redding was never far away from controversy. She was barely into her freshman year in 1968 when she joined a black student walkout to get the university to admit more blacks — a move that resulted in a near quadrupling of the number of black students to about 250 the following year. And after students staged a strike that effectively closed down the university to show their opposition to the Vietnam War, Redding was part of a “blue ribbon” delegation from Brown that went in the spring of 1970 to Washington to...

A Sudanese priest recently had an eye-opening introduction to the U.S. Episcopal Church. John, a clergyman from the Episcopal Church of Sudan, sent an inquiry to the "justice missioner" on the website of the Diocese of Newark. The justice missioner responded to John's email and informed him that her focus was advocacy for people with disabilities, people of color, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex community. Although fluent in English, John found this language incomprehensible. He knew Americans talked openly about homosexuality, but he was bewildered by the terms "transgender" and "intersex." John asked the justice missioner if...

Preaching God's word with an eye on national politics Pepperell vicar leads liberal think tank By Rich Barlow Globe Correspondent / March 5, 2009 One day about six years ago, the Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale was testifying before Congress on behalf of abortion rights, basking among politicians who were interested to hear her views and happy to shake her hand. The next day, the Episcopal priest was back for a meeting at St. David's, her tiny Pepperell church, where a 2-year-old scaled her chair to perch on her head.

Washington, DC—An Episcopal priest who has received a Buddhist lay ordination has been elected bishop in the Diocese of Northern Michigan. The Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester, who has served in the diocese since 2001, was elected on the first ballot and received 88 percent of the delegate votes. *** Forrester, who has been identified by his former bishop Jim Kelsey as ‘walking the path of Christianity and Zen Buddhism together, is not the first Episcopal clergyman to practice dual faiths. In 2004, Pennsylvania priest Bill Melnyk was revealed to be a druid; while in 2007 Seattle priest Ann Holmes Redding...

As bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande, the Rev. Jeffrey Steenson came down on the conservative side of many issues. He opposed the election of the first openly gay bishop, and he did not allow the blessing of same-sex unions in his diocese. Steenson said those conflicts made it impossible for him to pursue his ultimate goal of helping the Anglican Communion unite with the Roman Catholic Church. On Saturday, both Catholics and Episcopalians celebrated Steenson's ordination as a Roman Catholic priest. Steenson, a married father of three, said he is the first sitting Episcopal bishop since...

A two-year-old church property dispute between Episcopalians and Anglicans appears to be on its way to the Virginia Supreme Court. On Feb. 3, The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia together filed an appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court hoping to overturn a Dec. 19 decision by Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Randy Bellows in favor of the Anglican District of Virginia, known as ADV. On Feb. 10, the Episcopal appeal was followed by a motion asking for an exception to the Supreme Court's limit of 35 pages in appeal cases. The property dispute originally arose as a result of...

US Presiding Bishop deposes Church of England Bishop Wednesday, 28th January 2009. 12:01pm By: George Conger. The Presiding Bishop of the US Episcopal Church has announced that she has deposed a bishop of the Church of England from the ordained ministry. On Jan 23, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori announced that she had accepted the voluntary renunciation of ministry given to her by the Rt Rev Henry Scriven, Mission Director for South America of the newly merged South American Mission Society (SAMS) – Church Mission Society (CMS) and removed him from the ranks of the ordained ministry. Under the terms...

The Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, who has been bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia for 24 years, announced today that he will step down Oct. 1 to make way for a successor who was named in 2007. The diocese, which covers northern and eastern Virginia and includes 80,000 members, is one of the largest in the Episcopal Church, the U.S.-based branch of the global Anglican Communion. Starting this fall the diocese will be overseen by the Rt. Rev. Shannon Johnston, 50, an Alabama native who has worked in dioceses in the South and is known for his work...